Man to be charged with mischief for packing grenade replica in luggage

ctvmontreal.ca
Published Thursday, March 3, 2011 6:58PM EST

DORVAL - Police arrested two men who arrived at Trudeau airport Thursday morning with a suspicious object in their luggage.

The two men, ages 73 and 43, were travelling together and were questioned by investigators for much of the afternoon Thursday.

The 73-year-old man was released later in the day, while the 43-year-old man remained in custody and will face a charge of mischief at the Montreal courthouse on Friday. Const. Olivier Lapointe of the Montreal police confirmed the man was carrying a grenade replica in his luggage.

"It looked just like a grenade, except it didn't have any explosives," Lapointe said. "Having an object like that in his luggage created a huge disturbance. We had to go down there and check it out, a lot of people had their flights delayed. It's the very definition of mischief."

As of 7:30 a.m. events returned to normal for most passengers. Ten international departures faced delays of up to 90 minutes, but by 10 a.m. all delayed flights had taken off.

Travellers like Andre Pomerleau felt reassured by the response.

"It shows that there's a lot of security around for them to have caught it. Still I feel safe here," said Pomerleau.

Police tried all afternoon to figure out why the man had a replica grenade in his luggage.

"These kinds of situations are taken seriously," said Constable Anie Lemieux. "You know we have many events like this during the year here and there. Obviously in an airport it's taken maybe a little more seriously because of the circumstances."